In the modern economy, individual consumers and other entities are presented with bills for goods and services purchased from multiple vendors, service providers and others. Payment for many such goods and services are made on a periodic basis, often monthly. Others are one-time transactions. Consumers and other entities may wish to pay periodic and other bills using credit accounts. This may be desirable, for example, where liquid FUNDS are not available to make payment, where the consumer or other entity seeks to take advantage of reward or other incentive programs for making payment with credit, or for other reasons.
In recent years, enabled by the pervasiveness of the Internet, some Web-based services have been developed to enable consumers to view and pay bills online. Such services, however, facilitate payment only from the consumer's checking account, or at times from brokerage or other accounts with check-writing privileges. Such systems therefore may not function for credit accounts, and may not be optimized for the consumer who wishes to pay with credit instead of cash or cash equivalent, on a recurring basis, at certain times of the month, or with other parameters taken into account.
These and other drawbacks exist.